The use of computing devices by users having varying levels of technical expertise generates new opportunities for providing improved user experiences through convenient and effective customer support. In-person customer support at retail locations and computer service centers can provide a high level of service, but travelling to a physical location may be inconvenient for the customer and the cost of maintaining the staff and facilities at such a location can be undesirably high. Customer support by e-mail might be more convenient as it permits the user to initiate the service request from any location, but results in undesirable delays due to the asynchronous nature of e-mail communication. Telephone support may provide improved response time and a more personal interaction with the support agent, but due to varying user levels of technical expertise and the limitations of voice communications, it may be challenging for the user to clearly communicate the problem being experienced and challenging for the support agent to clearly communicate the steps needed to resolve the problem.
Today, interactive on-line customer support is offered. For example, when a customer experiences problems with setup or operation of a product or service, the customer may go on-line with a network based customer service tool that offers the customer the option to see and speak with a user support agent. However, in many services, the customer has to wait on hold for an extended period of time before a user support agent becomes available and is inter-connected with the customer. At least one on-line support service is presently offered that seeks to enhance a customer's support experience by presenting a “picture in picture” window on the display of the customer device, where the window includes a video feed of a face of the human support agent helping the customer.
However, existing customer support services experience limits. For example, some services seek to interconnect the support agent with the customer in a relatively quick period of time. To maintain short connection delays, a large number of support agents is utilized and the interconnections are closely managed to limit an amount of time that any customer is not connected to a support agent. Also, in order to present a window with a video feed of the face of the support agent on the customer computing device, the service utilizes a relatively large amount of bandwidth to convey video images of the support agent's face with sufficient resolution to provide convincing images of the support agent during a support session.